n, put to her
certain questions simply in order to gratify your lust, and with the object
of satisfying your evil propensities?

2. "_Nonne munus audiendi confessione suscepi, aut peregi ex prava
incontinentiae appeta?_" (Idem, p. 582.)

Have I not repaired to the confessional and heard confessions with the
intention of gratifying my evil passions?

O, ye women, who tremble like slaves at the feet of the priests, you
sometimes admire the patience and charity of those good (?) priests, who
are willing to spend so many long and tedious hours in hearing the
confession of your secret sins; and you hardly know how to express your
gratitude for so much kindness and charity. But hush! Listen to the voice
of God speaking to the conscience of the priest, through the Church of
Rome! "Have you not" she asks him, "heard the confession of women simply to
foster or gratify the groveling passions of your fallen nature and corrupt
heart?"

Please notice, it is not I, or the enemies of your religion, who put to
your priests the above questions: it is God himself who, in his pity and
compassion, compels your own church to ask such questions; that your eyes
may be opened, and that you may be rescued from all the dangerous
obscenities and the humiliating and degrading slavery of auricular
confession. It is God's will to deliver you from such bondage and
degradation. In his tender mercies, he has provided means to drag you out
of that cess-pool called confession; to break the chains which bind you to
the feet of a miserable and blasphemous sinner called confessor, who, under
the presence of being able to pardon your sins, usurps the place of your
Saviour and your God! For while you are whispering your sins in his ear,
God says to him, through his church, in tones loud enough to be heard: "In
hearing the confession of these women, are you not actuated by lust,
spurred by evil passions?"

Is this not sufficient to warn you of the danger of auricular confession?
Can you now with any sense of safety or propriety, come to that priest, for
whom your very confession may be a snare, a cause of fall or fearful
temptation? Can you with a particle of honor or modesty willingly expose
yourself to impure desires or shameful deeds? Can you, with any sort of
womanly dignity consent to entrust that man with your inmost thoughts and
desires, your most humiliating and secret actions, when you know that that
man may not have any higher object in listenin